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At least that's the plan for its new SuperNAP campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center in Northern Nevada, which is shaping up to be the largest data center in the world once completed.

The company recently broke ground on its construction site just east of Reno-Sparks, where it is building its newest SuperNAP facility. Originally announced as a $1 billion project, Switch now says the Northern Nevada data center will cost $3 billion when fully built out. Once completed, the SuperNAP Tahoe Reno Industrial Campus will house seven buildings totaling 6.49 million square feet.

The fact that the campus is being built on the world's largest industrial park — which also happens to be the future site of another largest building of its kind in Tesla Motors' Gigafactory — is not lost on Adam Kramer, Switch's vice president of strategy.

"You're going to have the largest manufacturing facility in the world and the largest data center right across each other," Kramer said. "This community is not going to be the same community, and we're seeing this as we talk to tech companies (looking at the area)."

CLOSE

What's it like to fly over the largest data center in the world? Here's a rendered fly-over video of the Switch SuperNAP Tahoe Reno Industrial Campus to give you an idea.

BIG PLANS

The Tahoe Reno SuperNAP will be larger than the current king of data centers, which is also operated by Switch. With nine buildings totaling 1.5 million square feet — plus three more facilities on the way that will boost its size to nearly 2.4 million square feet — Switch's SuperNAP Las Vegas is the largest existing data center campus in the world.

The Tahoe Reno SuperNAP also will eclipse the data center king-in-waiting that's located in China. The Range International Group data center, a collaboration between Range and IBM, in the Chinese city of Langfang is projected to measure 6.3 million square feet once finished.

Switch's Northern Nevada facility will also boast the single largest data center building on Earth. The first facility on the campus, the SuperNAP Tahoe Reno 1 building, will measure 1.2 million square feet. In contrast, the largest building in Switch's Las Vegas campus is about 515,000 square feet.

The building is so large that it will have a 300 megavolt ampere (MVA) substation and an energy capacity of 150 megawatts. To put that in context, 100 megawatts can power anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 homes. The SuperNAP Tahoe Reno 1 building, which will start operations in 2016, also will require 82,000 tons of cooling. Its anchor tenant will be a name that's well known in the e-commerce industry: eBay.

"EBay will be taking the entire back end of the building," Kramer said.

The first building project will employ more than 1,000 construction workers, according to Switch. Kramer declined to provide detailed staffing counts for the SuperNAP facility once it's operational. As a massive colocation center that also provides physical space to clients, the SuperNAP can have more people on site than a typical data center. Kramer pointed to its Las Vegas campus as an example, which has 5,000 people with badged access — 2,300 of whom have Nevada licenses.

Switch's arrival to the area is "a big deal," said Mike Kazmierski, president and CEO of EDAWN, which works with businesses looking to relocate or expand into the region.

"Switch will have as much impact on the community as Tesla but in a different way," Kazmierski said. "The two companies complement each other in a way that appeals to different types of companies that would consider coming here."

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There's moving dirt, then there's what construction workers did to prepare the Switch SuperNAP Tahoe Reno Industrial Campus site. Here's a time lapse video that documents the ground work from start to finish.

ON THE MAP

The infrastructure being built by Switch will also pay dividends for the area, Kazmierski said. The addition of the Northern Nevada campus greatly expands its high-speed connectivity coverage area known as the "Superloop," which allows data to be transported between Reno, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles in less than 7 milliseconds. In addition to faster speeds, the new infrastructure also increases security and redundancy in case of disasters.

Although consumers may not directly benefit from the infrastructure immediately, businesses should see more opportunities to connect out to different carriers, Kramer said. Switch is also working on a program for rural areas, including improved connectivity for schools, which will be a difference maker for the state, said Steve Hill, director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

"Not only does it provide a massive economic boost for Northern and Southern Nevada but also through construction of the Superloop, it will provide high-speed connectivity access to rural Nevada, a key for education and economic development," Hill said.

Switch's community work — including its technical and financial involvement with the 25,000-square-foot downtown Innevation Center in partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno — also earned kudos from Mayor Hillary Schieve. Schieve says one thing that distinguishes Switch from a lot of other companies, especially those from out of state, is how it frequently communicates with the city. Schieve says she's also hopeful that Switch's arrival would help the city with its goal to become a high-speed "gigabit city," which Reno continues to aspire to after being beaten out by Kansas City a few years ago as a site for Google's gigabit fiber service.

"I like how Switch is very community-oriented and very engaging," Schieve said. "The other thing I love is that they're very pro-education, which has been really great for us."

A large part of the "home team" feel generated by Switch stems from how it sees itself as a Nevada company, something founder and CEO Rob Roy frequently touts. Just last week, Roy reiterated that his company wants to make Nevada "the most digitally connected (state) in the U.S." For a revenue-challenged state still suffering from the effects of the recession, any boost to infrastructure and education is much needed.

One positive for Northern Nevada is that the presence of big hitters such as Apple, Tesla and recent arrival Rackspace is giving the area a lot of momentum, according to economic development watchers. Kramer says the momentum was apparent during the recent trade mission to Europe by Gov. Brian Sandoval, where Kramer saw firsthand how other countries reacted to the high-profile announcements in the Reno area. The question now is how to best capitalize on it.

"We have the global eye looking at us in Northern Nevada," Kramer said. "We're on the map."